H3nrik V! wrote on 2023-05-08, 06:13:
My guess is they're Gold top chips, as John wrote in the thread on CPU-World, the full ceramic chips had heat issues, and as such were produced for a short period of time only.
You're probably right about the replacements being gold tops.
I didn't talk to John, but I looked through a bunch of photos of full ceramic Socket4s. The latest one I found was from week 44 of 1993. They were introduced on Mar 22 (week 14), so that implies they were made for at least six months. I'm not sure exactly when they stopped though. It could have been as late as early 1994.
I never realised the ceramic ones were mostly made in 1993. The gold tops were still being made in 1995.
It seems that the "processor" marked chips were also mostly made in 1993. The one in this thread is from early 1994. My guess is that is one of the last before it was dropped.
What was the significance? FDIV? Do all Pentiums with "processor" has FDIV?
*edit*
It looks to me like "processor"was phased out with the introduction of the 3.3V Pentiums. At least I haven't been able to find one with that marking. The latest picture of a Socket4 chip with the marking I could find was week 14 1994. The earliest without was week 31. So the change happened around week 20.
FDIV wasn't publicly discovered until October 1994, but intel knew about it in May. It seems that pretty much all pre-1995 Pentiums have FDIV.
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